Uncle Tom's Cabin
Justin Payne Period 5 Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a best selling book by Harriet Beecher Stowe that emphasizes the wrong of slavery. The book starts out with a enslaved family whose son is threatened to be sold into slavery. On a journeyto search freedom they risk their lives to live in peace and liberty. Another character in the book, Uncle Tom, is a slave who lives on a plantation. He is treated well and grows to have a relationship with the plantation owner. However, Uncle Tom is sold to anotherplantation owner who constantly beats him and is cruel to him. Eventually Uncle Tom’s body has enough of the cruel beatings and he ends up dead. So why has this book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin made it through thick and thin. Over one hundred and sixty years this book has made it’s way through politicians mouths and debates. How was this book able to succeed during the time it was published when so many other anti-slavery books failed. The book that started out as short stories that were rejected by many was able to transform the war and the United States from then on. Is it possible that this book alone catapulted the Civil War to come earlier than it would have if the book was not published? http://historymartinez.wordpress.com/2010 /10/24/uncle-toms-cabin-powerpoint/ Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a best selling book by Harriet Beecher Stowe that emphasizes the wrong of slavery. The book starts out with a enslaved family whose son is threatened to be sold into slavery. On a journey to search freedom they risk their lives to live in peace and liberty. Another character in the book, Uncle Tom, is a slave who lives on a plantation. He is treated well and grows to have a relationship with the plantation owner. However, Uncle Tom is sold to another plantation owner who constantly beats him and is cruel to him. Eventually Uncle Tom’s body has enough of the cruel beatings and he ends up dead. So why has this book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin made it through thick and thin. Over one hundred and sixty years this book has made it’s way through politicians mouths and debates. How was this book able to succeed during the time it was published when so many other anti-slavery books failed. The book that started out as short stories that were rejected by many was able to transform the war and the United States from then on. Is it possible that this book alone catapulted the Civil War to come earlier than it would have if the book was not published? Early Life Harriet Elizabeth Beecher was born on June 14, 1811 in Litchfield Connecticut to Rev. Lyman and Roxanna Beecher. Harriet Beecher was born into a family where there would be eleven children. She was the sixth oldest out of the eleven. When Stowe was only five years old her mother passed away. Stowe began to write at an early age and soon would win a writing essay contest in her school. Lyman soon remarried to a woman named Harriet Porter Beecher who added three more kids to Lyman’s eight with Roxanna his late wife. Stowe’s education was one of the better for women at that time. At a younger age she was able to conduct persuasive arguments from boarders attending Tapping Reeve’s law school near their house. Stowe would attend Sarah Pierce’s academy, an early school to encourage girls to study academics. After graduating Stow would go to Hartford Female Seminary school recently founded by her sister. She would first be a student then switch roles and become a teacher at the school. There she would enhance her writing talents and write many essays during her time there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Harriet_Beecher_Stowe_by_Francis_Holl.JPG Marriage and Children Harriet Beecher moved to Cincinnati, Ohio where her father was president of a school by the name of Lane Theological Seminary. In Cincinnati she met a man by the name of Calvin Stowe whom she fell in love with and married. She then changed her name from Harriet Elizabeth Beecher to Harriet Beecher Stowe. Stowe would have seven children with Calvin Stowe. In the summer of 1849 Harriet Stowe lost one of her children, 18 month old Samuel Charles Stowe who died of Cholera. Later in life she said that this experience of losing her child help her write Uncle Tom’s Cabin because it helped her realize the pain that slave mothers went through when their children were sold to other plantation farmers. In 1850 when Calvin Stowe had received a new job the Stowe family moved to Maine until 1853. While living in Brunswick Maine Stowe would often write her sister-in-law. After showing frustration about the Second Fugitive Slave Law her sister- in-law Isabella Porter Beecher said, “... if I could use a pen as you can, Hatty, I would write something that would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is” (HarrietBeecherStoweCenter.org, Uncle Tom’s Cabin). After reading this Harriet felt a need to write about the issue of slavery to voice her opinion. http://fixquotes.com/authors/harriet-beecher-stowe.htm Second Fugitive Slave Law The Second Fugitive Slave Law or The Compromise of 1850 allowed it possible to recapture runaway slaves even after they had reached a free state and were declared free. The Fugitive Slave Law before then was the one made in 1793. The Fugitive Law of 1793 allowed masters, by themselves to search and take them back on their own. The slave laws of that time did not protect them from being accused of being a fugitive slave however a trial would be held to decide the legitimacy of the recapture. Events during the 1840’s prompted plantation owners to have stronger laws about the recapture of slaves. Slaves began to escape more, black and white abolitionists help slaves escape and states were creating laws where they determine the status of slaves ( Harold, pg 2). In the Supreme Court case Prigg vs. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania the court ruled that they could not help with the recapture of slaves. This also included the states from helping the slave masters. Therefore, this ruling made it nearly impossible to recapture a runaway slave. In response to southerners’ concern Senator James Mason from Virginia proposed a second, stronger fugitive slave law. Nine months later the bill became a law. Now all states had to help all slave masters to find alleged runaway slaves. Not only did the law help the slave masters, but officers could demand help from citizens. Now citizens had to go out of their way to help something that they may not support otherwise they might be fined and jailed for up to six months. However, the law was not as harsh on the slaves who had already escaped. Many of the already escaped slaves escaped to Canada where they were out of United States reach. However, this made many people in the north furious about the Second Fugitive Slave Law. Many more started helping more slaves escape and more people were opposed to slavery. Harriet Beecher Stowe was one of the people opposed to slavery in the first place, then she was more enraged when the Second Fugitive Slave Law was passed. This was the final straw for Stowe she would soon write a book that would change the course of history forever. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom's_Cabin Summary of Uncle Tom’s Cabin Uncle Tom’s Cabin was Stowe’s best selling book that ran not only all over the country, but all over the world as well. The novel takes place in several places. The first of these places was in Kentucky where Stowe follows a man by the name of Uncle Tom around a plantation owned by the plantation owner Mr. Shelby. Mr. Shelby sells Tom to another man who lived in New Orleans. This man, Augustine St. Clare was nice to Uncle Tom. Soon enough Uncle Tom had a relationship with his daughter Eva who later died by some means. Uncle Tom is later sold to another man by the name of Simon Legree who lived in the rural area of Louisiana. Legree was a cruel master who beat Uncle Tom until he eventually beats Tom to death. The novel has also another character who successfully escapes slavery. The woman, Eliza Harris has a child whose slave master agree’s to sell. Eliza and Harry, the child go on a journey hiding and covering up their tracks in order to find freedom in the northern states. Harry and Eliza cross the Ohio River where they are reunited with Harry’s father and the three of them emigrate to Liberia. (Stowe). http://www.abhmuseum.org/2012/03/uncle-toms-cabin-published-this-date-in-1852/ Reactions to the Novel The book Uncle Tom’s Cabin had many reactions. Positive reactions came from abolitionists and negative comments came from southern plantation owners. From those who opposed slavery it was a fair way to show the cruelties of slavery and the reasons why slavery should be illegal in the states. To others it was an unfair and unjust picture of slavery because it was appropriate and biblically right. In general people in the north loved this book and started to oppose slavery even more. The book seemed to enrage people over the issue of slavery to the point where in the next 10 years would cause the events leading up to the Civil War. Even though the debate whether the book was just or not the fact that the book was popular is not in denial. The book sold 10,000 copies within days it cam out and over 300,000 copies during its first year in America alone. In England the book had sold more than 1 million copies in its first year and over 2 million its first year worldwide (Gamber, pg 2). Some people could not evern read the book it was too much to bear to read for them. Mary Chesnut wrote a reaction to the book saying, “I may not have any logic, any sense, but instinct tells me, all the same, that slavery time has come. If we don’t end it, they will. ‘After all this tried to read Uncle Tom, but could not; too sickening….think of a man sending his little son to beat a human being tied to a tree…..you must skip that; it is too bad” (Penguin Classics, 384). Stowe visited Lincoln at the White House and there it is believed to be said by Lincoln when he first meets her, “So this is the little lady who made this great war” (Delbanco, pg 2). Many anti-slavery abolitionists started riots in the North. The two years before the Civil War started were important because these riots would soon lead to the attack on Fort Sumter which started the Civil War (Reynolds, 3). Significance If President Lincoln is believed to say these things then the book has really made an impact on the society of the time. Southerners blame Stowe for encouraging the north to be aggressive about the topic of slavery. Stowe was such an influence that she was invited to the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Even though the Second Fugitive Slave Law was a peaceful transfer in law the bridge between the north and the south widened. It is possible that the Civil War would have happened without the book, but it is also possible that I could have not happened. The South succeeded because they thought that if Lincoln got reelected he would side with the North and get rid of slavery. If Stowe did not write this book or if Lincoln was no reelected the course of American history could have been vastly different from what is known now. The decade and half of significance shaped the lives of Americans from then on. Slaves first being looked at as people, then being free, next the Great Migration which lead the Harlem Renaissance which shaped American history and influenced American literature, art, music, and fashion. Blacks being discriminated against in public places would not have happened when it did nor the leaders such as Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr. fighting for civil rights, therefore not having the laws that we have now about discrimination. These two key aspects helped shape American history from then on out and at the time they might not have even noticed it. Cites Gamber, Francesca. “Stowe Publishes Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Great Events from History: The Nineteenth Century. Ed. John Powell. Salem Press, 2007. Salem History Web. 24 Oct. 2013. Harrold, Stanley. “Second Fugitive Slave Law.” Great Events from History: The Nineteenth Century. Ed. John Powell. Salem Press, 2007. Salem History Web. 24 Oct. 2013. Reynolds, David S. “1852: did a novel start the Civil War? Published 160 years ago, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin captivated--and bitterly divided--America.” New York Times Upfront 2 Jan. 2012:24+. General OneFile. Web. 24 Oct. 2013. |}